The National Institutes of Health Reform Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-482), signed into law on January 15, 2007, and further amended by the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-85), established new reporting and information disclosure requirements for institutions receiving NIH awards for the training of graduate students for doctoral degrees. Section 403C of the Public Health Service Act now requires these institutions to annually report to the NIH the following information for graduate students that have been supported by NIH training awards:

The percentage of such students admitted for study who successfully attain a doctoral degree, and

The average time (not including any leaves of absence) for such students between the beginning of graduate study and the receipt of a doctoral degree.

Institutions must also provide this same information to all applicants to doctoral programs supported by NIH training awards.

NIH is implementing these mandates through new Graduate Student Reporting and Assurance requirements in the DHHS Public Health Service Grant Application (PHS 398) and the DHHS Public Health Service Noncompeting Continuation Progress Report (PHS 2590) (see Guide Notice NOT-OD-09-139).

Institutions Affected by these RequirementsInstitutions affected by these Reporting and Assurance requirements are doctoral degree granting institutions that receive any of the following institutional training grant awards or cooperative agreements from the NIH for the doctoral training of graduate students:

D43, TU2, T15, T32, T37, T90, U2R, U90, and U54/TL1

Institutions are not affected by this requirement if they:

Receive only individual NIH fellowship awards.

Provide training only to undergraduate or master’s level students supported through one of the activity codes listed above.

Provide only short-term training to doctoral-level health professional students through one of the activity codes listed above.

Receive an award for one or more of the activity codes for doctoral training of graduate students, but do not confer doctoral degrees themselves (e.g., teaching hospitals).

Receive an institutional training grant award for doctoral training of graduate students from a Public Health Service Agency other than the NIH.

Implementation
Beginning October 1, grantees with NIH institutional training grant awards with the activity codes specified above must provide information on completion rates and time to degree in the new Program Statistics section of Table 12A (Predoctoral Trainees Supported by this Training Grant) when submitting a renewal application (PHS 398) or non-competing continuation progress report (PHS 2590). A new version of Table 12A that includes fields for these Program Statistics is available now and has been posted with the PHS 2590, however, completion of these fields is only required as of October, 1, 2009.

To ensure that institutions provide the required information to applicants to doctoral programs supported by NIH training awards, NIH has also adopted a new Graduate Student Assurance Requirement, which now appears in the PHS 398 as one of the Assurances and Certifications that applicant organizations must fulfill (see Part III, 2.16). Thus, in submitting an application or progress report for one of the specified activity codes, the Signing Official verifies the applicant organization's compliance with this assurance. Institutions may decide how best to present the required information to applicants and may wish to consider consolidating data by department or broad program to which candidates apply, or providing additional information in order to provide context. Institutions need not notify NIH of their plans for complying with new assurance. However, they must include the new data as part of Table 12A in all annual progress reports and competing applications submitted on/after October 1, 2009.

Inquiries

Office of Extramural Programs
Office of Extramural Research
National Institutes of Health
Email: NIHTrain@mail.nih.gov